So the gaming store where I've been doing D&D encounters has a decent number of people who want to play encounters, but aren't ready for 5e yet, so I've DMed scourge of the sword coast and now Dead in Thay in 4e. For Scourge I just made monsters based on the 4e monster math (with reduced hitpoints), but this season I noticed something as I was paging through the 5e monster list.
1)The 4e monster math card that I use states that AC should be 14+lvl and attack should be 5+lvl
2) most of the 5e monsters players were scheduled to face seem to have an AC in the neighborhood of 14 and an attack of more or less +5
So I ran a few of the monsters players faced more or less straight from the 5e pages, just with the +6 to AC and Attack (with NADs=AC-2, adjusting up and down as likely), and the numbers worked pretty much perfectly. Tougher monsters had a few points higher and were tougher, weaker ones lower. 5e Saving throws were replaced by an attack that is DC-10+lvl OR the same as their attack+6 (for mages most often) if it looked appropriate.
I then had to decide how I was going to deal with HP, dmg, spells and effects.
For HP at first I toyed with just double 5e Hp, but that falls apart as some of the monsters they face have 7 hp, others 75, others 100. I ended up giving them the HP based on 4e level which I've gotten pretty good at adjusting to how long I want the encounter to last but found it did relate to the 5e stats: Basically for the level 6 party i went 100hp for if 5e was near 100, 70hp if 5e was near 70, 50hp if meant to be a threat but not take up time, 30 hp if in the 5-30 5e hp range but in limited numbers and minions if in that same range and there were 5-10 of them.
For damage: weaker foes often seem to have acceptable dmg, its low, but the module usually has a lot of them. For tougher foes I used [w]+lvl often with suggested multiattacks (limit 2, as some monsters get 3, which would be too high). Spells do 1 or 2 dice of damage based on at will or spell slot, +lvl
For effects: For special effects I was going to try to keep them as close to written as possible, but I'll be honest, I often forgot to apply them or came up with an interesting effect off the top of my head and just used that. I think that the translation would be easy enough make though.
I don't know if it would work for low level or paragon/epic 4e, but so far nothing has been glaringly out of sorts.
So, my current goal is to run Dead in Thay using the 5e bestiary, giving all the creatures suggested, using as close to their printed powers as possible, and adjusting to 4e stats as directly as possible, as detailed above. The way Dead in Thay is set up for encounters all the tables are 'actually there' at the same time, meaning tables do communicate and talk to each other, so I think keeping as closely to the adventure as the 5e tables is a good goal, and I'm always curious about adapting 4e to old school dungeon crawling.
Any thing I should watch out for?
1)The 4e monster math card that I use states that AC should be 14+lvl and attack should be 5+lvl
2) most of the 5e monsters players were scheduled to face seem to have an AC in the neighborhood of 14 and an attack of more or less +5
So I ran a few of the monsters players faced more or less straight from the 5e pages, just with the +6 to AC and Attack (with NADs=AC-2, adjusting up and down as likely), and the numbers worked pretty much perfectly. Tougher monsters had a few points higher and were tougher, weaker ones lower. 5e Saving throws were replaced by an attack that is DC-10+lvl OR the same as their attack+6 (for mages most often) if it looked appropriate.
I then had to decide how I was going to deal with HP, dmg, spells and effects.
For HP at first I toyed with just double 5e Hp, but that falls apart as some of the monsters they face have 7 hp, others 75, others 100. I ended up giving them the HP based on 4e level which I've gotten pretty good at adjusting to how long I want the encounter to last but found it did relate to the 5e stats: Basically for the level 6 party i went 100hp for if 5e was near 100, 70hp if 5e was near 70, 50hp if meant to be a threat but not take up time, 30 hp if in the 5-30 5e hp range but in limited numbers and minions if in that same range and there were 5-10 of them.
For damage: weaker foes often seem to have acceptable dmg, its low, but the module usually has a lot of them. For tougher foes I used [w]+lvl often with suggested multiattacks (limit 2, as some monsters get 3, which would be too high). Spells do 1 or 2 dice of damage based on at will or spell slot, +lvl
For effects: For special effects I was going to try to keep them as close to written as possible, but I'll be honest, I often forgot to apply them or came up with an interesting effect off the top of my head and just used that. I think that the translation would be easy enough make though.
I don't know if it would work for low level or paragon/epic 4e, but so far nothing has been glaringly out of sorts.
So, my current goal is to run Dead in Thay using the 5e bestiary, giving all the creatures suggested, using as close to their printed powers as possible, and adjusting to 4e stats as directly as possible, as detailed above. The way Dead in Thay is set up for encounters all the tables are 'actually there' at the same time, meaning tables do communicate and talk to each other, so I think keeping as closely to the adventure as the 5e tables is a good goal, and I'm always curious about adapting 4e to old school dungeon crawling.
Any thing I should watch out for?
